that I should recount it; but I hasten, before another cancelling
telegram may arrive, to hunt out the notes which give me the
exact details of the case and to lay the narrative before my
readers.

It was, then, in the spring of the year 1897 that Holmes's iron
constitution showed some symptoms of giving way in the face of
constant hard work of a most exacting kind, aggravated, perhaps,
by occasional indiscretions of his own. In March of that year
Dr. Moore Agar, of Harley Street, whose dramatic introduction to
Holmes I may some day recount, gave positive injunctions that the
famous private agent lay aside all his cases and surrender
himself to complete rest if he wished to avert an absolute
breakdown. The state of his health was not a matter in which he
himself took the faintest interest, for his mental detachment was
absolute, but he was induced at last, on the threat of being
permanently disqualified from work, to give himself a complete
change of scene and air. Thus it was that in the early spring of
that year we found ourselves together in a small cottage near
Poldhu Bay, at the further extremity of the Cornish peninsula.

It was a singular spot, and one peculiarly well suited to the
grim humour of my patient. From the windows of our little
whitewashed house, which stood high upon a grassy headland, we
looked down upon the whole sinister semicircle of Mounts Bay,
that old death trap of sailing vessels, with its fringe of black
cliffs and surge-swept reefs on which innumerable seamen have met
their end. With a northerly breeze it lies placid and sheltered,
inviting the storm-tossed craft to tack into it for rest and
protection.